Watch this exclusive Mr. Media interview with rock 'n'
roll legend Graham Parker, star of the documentary film Don't
Ask Me Questions: The Unsung Life of Graham Parker and The
Rumour by clicking on the video player above!

Mr. Media is recorded live before a studio audience
of guys who may have sold more records and earned higher paydays
for their concerts but who would trade it all for an ounce of the
credibility and integrity of Graham Parker… in the NEW new media
capital of the world… St. Petersburg, Florida!

Order Don't Ask Me Questions: The Unsung Life of Graham
Parker and The Rumour, a documentary film by Michael and John
Gramaglia, available from Amazon.com by clicking on the DVD cover
above!

Graham Parker? Graham friggin’ Parker? Where the hell
has that guy been? If you made a list of artists whose rock ‘n’
roll personified the sound of the mid-to-late 1970s, I think Graham
Parker and The Rumour would have to be near the top.

GRAHAM PARKER podcast excerpt:
"I emailed the people in The Rumour and most said, 'Hell, yes!
Let's go! There wasn't too much of 'I don't know if that's the
right thing to do...' It was the perfect time to reunite. After I
did it, I looked on the Internet and saw that almost every band in
the world had already done the same thing and I was like, 'D'OHHH!
Not very original is it?'"

Order Judd Apatow's 'This Is 40' starring Paul Rudd and
Graham Parker, available from Amazon.com by clicking on the DVD
cover above!

The top, that is, of the lists of people who actually heard the
man and his band. He was the guy that the major rock critics
insisted you had to know, whether you liked it or not. Frankly, I
think one of the things that hurt Graham Parker and The Rumour was
that the people who loved them demanded we love them, too, which
was kind of a turn-off for some folks. It also didn’t help that
Parker’s reputation with much of the press was as a distant,
difficult chap to get to know and get close to. The high water mark
for Graham Parker and The Rumour was the release of the album,
Squeezing Out Sparks. More than one reviewers described is
as the perfect rock ‘n’ roll album.

GRAHAM PARKER podcast excerpt:
"For me, acting in Judd Apatow's 'This Is 40' was very challenging.
I'd ever done it before and someone said, 'Judd wants you to
improv.' I'd done my lines in the script so I brought my own
sketches. Where the script said I had to turn to Paul Rudd's
character and say, 'I've got to go to the podiatrist, I've got a
bad foot,' I brought gout in it. 'What's wrong?' 'Touch of gout.'I
used Chris O'Dowd and Lena Dunham, who were in the back of the
scene. I brought them in by looking at them. I enlarged the scene
and I sorta got the hang of things."

Order 'Three Chords Good' by Graham Parker and The Rumour,
available from Amazon.com by clicking on the DVD cover
above!

A whole lot has happened since Parker broke off from The Rumour
in 1980 after a five-year run. In the decades since, he has been
mostly a solo act – sometimes touring backed by a band called The
Figgs – reinventing himself more than once for practical reasons.
The latest reinvention is as the willing subject of a
Kickstarter-supported documentary film called Don’t Ask Me
Questions: The Unsung Life of Graham Parker and The Rumour.
Produced and directed by Michael Gramaglia, it not only brings
Parker back together with The Rumour to record a new album, it also
– at long last – offers the public a glimpse of a man in full:
musician, dad, nature lover. Parker and his friends and admirers –
including Bruce Springsteen, Joe Jackson, Nick Lowe, DJ Meg
Griffin, filmmaker Judd Apatow (who put Parker and The Rumour in
his film, This Is 40, starring Paul Rudd) and others –
help us understand a man who had no preparation for a life in the
spotlight and probably wishes, in retrospect, he had handled his
early opportunities differently.

About the Podcast

What is Mr. Media® Interviews? The curiosity of Terry Gross, the skepticism of John Oliver, the unpredictability of Howard Stern, and, on occasion, the zen of Jon Stewart! Since February 2007, more than 1,300 exclusive Hollywood, celebrity, pop culture video and audio podcast and print interviews by Mr. Media®, a.k.a., Bob Andelman, with newsmakers in TV, radio, movies, music, magazines, newspapers, books, websites, social media, politics, sports, graphic novels, and comics!